Some medieval manuscripts contain copies of only a handful of texts, and discerning a theme and an intention behind such a collection may be relatively straightforward. However, many collect multiple texts, or parts of texts, ranging from substantial sections to individual sentences. Some collections have defeated those attempting to catalogue them with the apparent variety of their contents. Nevertheless, as this fine collection of essays, the product of two international workshops organised by the editors around the themes of compilation and knowledge selection in early medieval manuscripts, amply demonstrates, medieval manuscripts were deliberate creations, and careful examination can tease out evidence of the intentions and designs of their producers.
The collection opens with a preface by Kelly and an introduction by Dorofeeva. In his thickly theoretical piece Kelly asks if manuscripts might be profitably examined as hedonistic objects, according to Karl Marx: “an object which possesses all pleasures in potentiality” (22). Dorofeeva then introduces the volume and its structure. It consists of three loose thematic sections of three articles each and an afterword.
The first section, “Knowledge Selection,” opens with Michael Eber’s study of collections of canonical texts. He focuses on texts relating to the turn-of-the-sixth-century Laurentian schism in Rome and shows that these materials were not always copied together as dossiers, but were split, rearranged or combined with other materials by early medieval scribes according to their understandings of the history of the church and their individual purposes. Lucia Castaldi and Laura Pani then examine the so-called Collectio pauli of letters of Gregory the Great. They show that, unlike commonly assumed, Paul the Deacon did not compile the collection but simply commissioned the oldest copy of it. Instead, they demonstrate that at least one other copy of the collection (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14641) descends independently from the lost archetype of the collection, meaning that Paul’s copy must also descend from an earlier one. In the third article in this section Sinéad O’Sullivan delivers an assured examination of a Carolingian compilation of Virgilian and other Classical materials (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 10307 + Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 1625 [III]) and its links to other materials and demonstrates how it reflects a Carolingian vision of history fusing the Classical heritage from Troy and Aeneas to the Caesars with Christian history.
In the next section, “Material Representation,” Evina Stein uses a rigorous study of the material characteristics of 434 early medieval manuscripts transmitting the whole or parts of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae to explore what these can reveal about how the manuscripts were produced and the uses they were intended for. Stein observes a Carolingian proliferation of often eminently portable selections and excerpts from the work, arguing that full copies would have been costly to produce and consequently rarer, leading to a situation where most readers would encounter Isidore’s ideas through such a selection. In the next article, Cinzia Grifoni discusses copies of biblical books with Carolingian commentaries, and particularly Otfrid of Wissemburg’s (d. After 871) annotated copy of the book of Isaiah (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Guelf MS 33. Weiss.). Grifoni shows how Otfrid carefully selected simple explanations of the biblical text and copied them as marginal annotations to facilitate study by monks with only elementary Latin competence. In the third article in the section, Thom Gobbitt examines scribal hands and layout of a later-ninth-century collection of legal texts (Modena, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS O.I.2). He argues against an earlier interpretation, which contended that that the manuscript presented “barbarian” laws and Carolingian imperial legislation, and in the process demonstrates how sure judgements on the intentions behind details of script or layout can only be reached by meticulously studying the whole manuscript.
In the final section, “Scribal Agency,” Mark Stansbury provides an illuminating general discussion of manuscript compilations and specifically on such compilations and their physical characteristics in the Carolingian library catalogue of St. Gall (St. Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 728). The article also includes a transcription of the booklist. In the next article, Elizabeth P. Archibald explores the manuscript contexts of copies of a short text introducing the Latin alphabet. Archibald shows how the text was frequently altered, copied into collections of grammatical texts and even supplemented with short edifying sentences on moral topics, creating highly individual collections of teaching materials instead of standardised “textbooks.” Concluding the section, Dorofeeva enquires into the social contexts of compilation and asks whether early medieval vademecums exist. Examining a selection of manuscript collections connected in modern scholarship with named early medieval figures, she observes that compilation and manuscript production was often communal: the production of compilations later used by a known individual was not necessarily directed by that individual, or such an actor might have participated in the creation of a compilation intended for the use of someone else. Consequently, rather than reflecting individual preoccupations, a compilation more likely reflects social expectations about which texts are suitable for which occupation or position.
The collection is concluded by Mariken Teeuwen’s afterword. Of the themes and concepts relevant to the collection, she reflects especially on entanglement and its potential through a brief examination of the various entanglements of an annotated Carolingian copy of Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (On the wedding of Philology and Mercury; Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS BPL 88), examining the networks created by the texts and paratexts of the manuscript.
This is a well put together collection that provides powerful arguments for considering medieval manuscripts intentional products of their particular social contexts. Correspondingly, the collection repeatedly demonstrates the profits to understanding that accrue from such approaches. Many of the contributions also usefully interrogate what material characteristics such as size or layout can reveal about the production and intended uses of a manuscript. In their focus on the communities and societies that produced these manuscripts, the contributions provide inspiring methodological and conceptual innovations.
Finally, the collection reflects the value of careful and sometimes slow scholarship. The increased availability of digital reproductions of medieval manuscripts has greatly facilitated access to them and increased their use in research. At the same time, as this collection amply demonstrates, to make sense of the contents of a manuscript compilation and the intentions behind it, one must know its material structure--its parts, its stages of compilation, possible traces of alterations to these--and this necessitates examining the manuscript in question in person.
This collection is much recommended to students of medieval manuscripts. Moreover, because understanding manuscript collections and their creation is in many ways at the heart of early medieval intellectual and cultural history, students of these will also find much food for thought in this volume. Published in open access, it should be well available to the wide readership it surely deserves.